done but deal with it.
The nasty bruise on her left hip spilled across her skin like a purple ink stain, disappearing beneath the line of her underwear. Gently, he peeled back the fabric and did not like how much will it took to stop peeling even after the whole bruise had been revealed.
It would take nothing more than a simple tug to have her bared completely. The proximity of his fingers to her sex burned through him even as he tried to focus on the bruise. She’d been hurt, and all he could think about was touching her, sliding his fingers into her soaking core. Jackass.
“See anything you like?” she commented wryly.
“Not especially. What I see is something that never should have happened.”
Whoever had done this to her had no clue what real pain was. And Charlie had many, many methods for introducing him to the concept. Unfortunately, there was less than no chance the authorities could figure out who had been responsible, if she’d even bothered to report it.
He glanced at her face as he ran his fingertips over the bruise. She flinched, and that pissed him off too.
Righteous anger made it easier to cover her back up without letting his fingers stray a few inches toward the paradise between her thighs. He pulled a blanket off the end of the bed and covered her with it. “Stay here. Be right back.”
In the kitchen, he found a box of sandwich bags and shoveled ice into one, sealed it and rummaged through her drawers until he came up with a dishtowel. As ordered, she lay huddled on the bed, but faint lines marred the pale skin of her face and fatigue pulled at her mouth. It snapped something inside.
Even though it would probably kill him, he stretched out next to her and rolled her spoon-style against his body, holding her tight while being careful not to hit her hip. That’s when he realized she was shaking.
His lungs hitched as he processed her misery.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” One hand drifted to her hair automatically, as he’d done so many times in the past, but never to comfort. It was… nice. And made what he had to do worse.
He cupped the back of her head and feathered a thumb across her cheek in apology, then slid an arm under the blanket to wedge the pack of ice against her hip.
She hissed, jerking against his iron hold across her chest. “That was dirty.”
No. Dirty would be the proper name for the images running through his head of what he’d like to be doing while stretched out on a bed with a half-naked Audra. But instead, he was icing her bruise and trying to talk down his erection.
“It’ll help with the swelling.” If only the same applied to him.
She sucked in a breath and squirmed, which did not help matters down below. “It’s cold.”
“It’s supposed to be,” he informed her mildly. “We’ll do this in a couple of rounds and then let it rest.”
“You’re gonna stick a bag of ice on my bare skin again?” She whacked his chest with the back of her head since he still had her arms pinned. “I can think of a lot of other things that I’d like you to put on my skin, but ice cubes wasn’t on the list.”
“Mine either,” he murmured and breathed in her scent. “But today’s your lucky day. I’ve got nowhere to be and strong arms. I can do this all night.”
For emphasis, he reached out and snapped off the light, plunging the room in darkness. Only sheer will staved off the chaos that normally accompanied his senses registering darkness. It was one of his worst triggers, but Audra needed him. She didn’t have to know that being here with her was costing him one sweat-laden spec of sanity for every second he stayed.
She sighed, but it was a breathy little number that stirred against his arm, and awareness leeched through his body until every nerve ending stood at red alert. He should have qualified that statement with but I’ll be certifiable at the end of it.
She fell quiet, and he thought he’d lulled her to sleep until she said, “Charlie?”
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
“You weren’t going to call me. Were you?”
In the dark, the significance of the question took on weight, and he didn’t even consider lying. “No. But not because I didn’t want to.”
That’s where he hesitated, because how did he explain the seething froth under his skin that he scarcely wanted to experience